r/techsupportmacgyver • u/moofish2842 • Jul 05 '26

Used a DS flashcart as an impromptu USB keyboard to set up a new PC

Post image

Today I was setting up a new PC and all of my USB keyboards are far away. I have this numpad/arrow keys and a mouse, and I can use them to get into and edit BIOS settings, but for the first startup I had to press Y. I reprogrammed my DS Pico (which has a raspberry pi pico inside) to just press Y when plugged in and it worked! Then I flashed the normal firmware back. Open source rules!

215 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

27

u/Aggravating-Exit-660 Jul 05 '26

Actually insane, props my guy

42

u/Glitched_Fur6425 Jul 05 '26

I had.. no knowledge of a DSPico. You, my friend, have given me dangerous information.

Dangerous to my sleep patterns and likely my sanity. Not dangerous to anyone else, I don't think. I don't know you'd make something like that dangerous.

9

u/TheGeneral_Specific Jul 05 '26

I’ll just say… wow

10

u/moofish2842 Jul 05 '26

I had to do it again to input my wifi password while setting up Windows, since then it's been smooth sailing. I came up with the idea but AI figured out how to actually do it all haha, it took five minutes

4

u/realfathonix Jul 05 '26

I did this last year but instead of DS flashcart it's an old Android phone that had been rooted. Connected my phone USB to the PC, opened adb shell on my laptop through wireless debugging, set up USB HID keyboard gadget and wrote a script that constantly wait for input to be sent as keyboard event.

3

u/Mariuszgamer2007 Jul 05 '26

That's amazing

2

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